Soros Made Major Portfolio Changes in Q4 2016 (AMZN, EBAY)

As we have reached the 45-day post-quarter mark, investors managing more than $100 million in assets are now required to have submitted documentation to the SEC detailing the changes in their portfolio holdings for the most recent quarter. As major investor information comes to light via these public 13-Fs, analysts examine the filings closely for a sense of how prominent hedge funds moved their money around in the past few months. George Soros, billionaire investment giant and head of Soros Fund Management, made a number of significant changes to his portfolio during the last quarter of 2016, according to his most recent 13-F filing.

Reducing or Eliminating Positions in Abbott Labs, Amazon, and More

Soros seems to have either significantly trimmed or eliminated entirely his positions in a number of e-commerce companies, including Amazon.com (AMZN), eBay Inc. (EBAY), and other related ventures. In fact, from his 13-F, it appears that Soros cut out a lot of his holdings in the wake of the November 8th U.S. presidential election. Among the other stocks that saw a reduction or full-scale elimination from Soros' portfolio are Abbott Labs (ABT), Netflix Inc. (NFLX), and Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI). Soros completely eliminated his holdings of Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX), Coca-Cola C. (KO), and Nvidia Corp. (NVDA).

Why might Soros have dumped these different holdings? Many speculators have guessed that this round of 13-Fs will reveal that investors decided to undergo a post-election sector rotation, getting rid of their positions in tech companies and related areas and investing instead in other types of companies. One of the sectors presumed to take a larger role in investor portfolios is banking and financials, in large part due to widespread assumptions that President Trump's fiscal policies will be kind to Wall Street elite.

Soros Adds Goldman Sachs

Indeed, one of the major new additions to Soros' portfolio in the last few months was a holding in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS). This suggests that Soros has taken a somewhat bullish approach to the financials sector, even in spite of his continued and repeated outspokenness against President Trump, both during the campaign season and in the time following the election. Aside from GS, Soros also added positions in Pandora Media Inc. (P) as well. Could Soros be benefiting from the long-standing market rally that the surprise victory of Donald Trump seems to have triggered? It does seem likely that this is the case, although Soros' positions could certainly have changed significantly in the time since the inauguration just a few weeks ago. Because 13-Fs are reflective and show investment information on a delay of more than a month, it's difficult to assess exactly how Soros and other investors have changed their tactics in recent weeks.